Skin serum se­crets

De­mys­ti­fy­ing the of­ten-be­wil­der­ing world of skin sci­ence and why you can rely on the Gold Stan­dard tick.

In­dus­try guide­lines al­low beauty com­pa­nies to make claims if they couch them in terms ‘may im­prove’ or ‘can help,’ but then with of­ten bam­boo­zling sci­en­tific jar­gon such as ‘in vitro trial on hu­man fi­brob­lasts’ to sub­stan­ti­ate a prod­uct’s abil­ity to in­crease col­la­gen pro­duc­tion.

“Yes, those tri­als do in­crease col­la­gen, but only in a petri dish,” says Snow­berry sci­en­tist, Dr Travis Baden­horst. “But, there is no cor­re­la­tion what­so­ever be­tween that in vitro trial and what the prod­uct will do on liv­ing, hu­man skin.”

So, what can we rely on? Wel­come to the Gold Stan­dard Clin­i­cal Trial. This is the only trial ac­cepted to show sci­en­tific sig­nif­i­cance, where nei­ther the sci­en­tists nor the par­tic­i­pants do­ing the trial, know whether they are us­ing the real prod­uct or a placebo. And since the re­sults of that trial can­not be ma­nip­u­lated by the brand owner, it is a trial, Dr Baden­horst says, that many skin care brands with prod­ucts of no great ef­fi­cacy, are un­der­stand­ably not keen to do.

For Snow­berry founder So­raya Hen­desi, proof by Gold Stan­dard was the only way to de­liver her prom­ise of anti-age­ing skin care that re­ally works. Prov­ing the point, in an eight-week Gold Stan­dard Clin­i­cal Trial con­ducted by Der­mat­est Med­i­cal Re­search In­sti­tute in Ger­many, Snow­berry’s New Ra­di­ance Face Serum with CuPEP™ re­duced wrin­kle vol­ume by a re­mark­able av­er­age of 25 per cent. For this rea­son, the serum was the only an­ti­wrin­kle prod­uct glob­ally, in­vited to be pre­sented to the 23rd World Congress of Der­ma­tol­ogy in Van­cou­ver in 2015.

The New Ra­di­ance Serum has since be­come pop­u­lar not just for the face, but also for help­ing to strengthen thin­ning skin on legs and hands; re­duc­ing red­ness and in­creas­ing mois­ture re­ten­tion. The key in­gre­di­ent, ex­plains Dr Baden­horst, is the skin-re­mod­elling Cop­per pep­tide-1 called CuPEP™. The serum also con­tains the nat­u­ral gly­can sodium hyaluronate, which is a hugely im­por­tant humec­tant for hy­drat­ing the skin.

The even more ca­pa­ble In­ten­sive Re­newal Face Serum with eProlex® also re­sulted from the five years of re­search car­ried out at the Uni­ver­sity of Auck­land by Dr Baden­horst’s team, which re­sulted in a world-first de­liv­ery sys­tem for skin-ben­e­fi­cial pep­tides. He de­scribes eProlex® as a “pep­tide power-pack” de­signed to help avoid the pre­ma­ture age­ing of skin, re­in­forced with highly skin-com­pat­i­ble macadamia nut and sun­flower seed oils, vi­ta­mins B, C and E; and essen­tial fatty acids omega 3 and 6.

Nat­u­ral her­bal oils play a very im­por­tant part in the Snow­berry range. Snow­berry’s Re­new Body Oil is a rapidly ab­sorbed and lux­u­ri­ous blend of macadamia and pure harakeke seed oil.

Skin neu­tral cleansers – and all of Snow­berry’s are – are the essen­tial first step. And then, he says, creams and serums must be for­mu­lated to ‘re­fresh’ the un­der­ly­ing cel­lu­lar ma­trix, which can be dam­aged by UV rays, ex­ces­sive su­gar and al­co­hol in our diet, and smok­ing.